A Forest of Ducks and the Flax-dam

I needed a phone booth to triumph in my eye.
The forest was too big to fit my eager schedule
With the ducks quacking constantly
Somewhere overhead and in the pond
In the kind of menacing way only crowded and animals can.
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart.

I worked my way through the vast foliage and mild thistles.
Mild because small pains make me feel accomplishment
Where big pains would just hurt.
Chucketa-chucketa-chucketa...
Heavy engine noise from somewhere. A sater pump.
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart.

The pump must work a well quite deep to
Thump so angrily.
Such things can be helpful when you're trapped
In the high woods festooned with heavy waters
Filled with dangerous animals.
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart.

I can not help but stand with a lost face.
The green brush is intoxicating with its green
Banners tacked-on everywhere a lure
Like a certain fish tackle only without the eyes.
But the love of the lushness doesn't hide the humidity.
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart.

Learning to live in such conditions
That are better suited for aquatic birds and beavers
Instead of for people who have toes that wrinkle in the wet
Or bleed with the weak thistles
Is a task.
You learn to like your own body odor even though
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart.

Despite resignation to the strangely broad expanse of wood
I'll still kill to get at a phone booth.
I don't have coin but I might call the authorities
Who listen to the kind of people who use a phone booth.
Thye might know where I was when
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart.

-From Seamus Heaney's "Death of a Naturalist"

Whale-Songs

Who knows how deep the leviathan sleeps
Under the turgid waves of disturbed sea,
Where furlongs of water keep all secrets
Of his body's breadth, the color of his
Eye? Lurking below the great wash concealed,
Monstrous as the horizon, there he lies
The unassailable beast. His father
Was born beofre all the cities of man,
Before God name the destinies of Creation.

The father of whales swung its unevolved
Flipper, then a paw, into the ocean
A billion years ago. A wolf-like thing,
It fled the shores back into the cradle
Of life. It grew strong on a diet
Of shadowy morsels, shed those vestments
That have no use in watery environs
In favor of size beyond all its foes.

Since timid men went forth from their tiny
Islands of land, they started drawing maps
Of their routes and conquests. And on the sides
Beyond the known was him, Leviathan.
They knew his tail, it the very weapon
Of Poseidon. And they knew, too,
His sad song that trembled the seas
With impunity. He invaded their dreams.

And so, man killed the huge frontiers. There's not
A new thing left to see except to be
Where others fear to leave their lives behind
And make fore the unplunged waters to look
For monsters in the deep. Who knos how far
Men never made for diving must go down
Beneath layers of their known and search for
Searching. Beware the dangers of whale-songs.

My Muse, Terrible

The Greeks called the chant.
A great sermon choir to harken the holy Muse
From her courts of flame.

Does she speak to me,
My white faerie whore
When I find my words, My smiles and those very
Notions of true beauty
Are lies,
Quiet witnesses to her fear that-
I might, nay do harbor what
She calls depravity?

When the weak wind blows I know
For then her words wind through my mind;
Those smirk stuck words choke
Every whistle what worries my wicked heart
And leave me atremble with furious guilt
And make it all worth while
     That I too felt the minute
     That I too knew her mouth
And hers would not know mine.

Kindly start them over, the lonely words of grace.
Kindly start them over, the hands upon the face.
We're walking in October down the stranger's line
And it's kinder to start this over than sing
     That same old rhyme.

Summer Swinging

Gardenias scream louder in the brain
encouraged by the tender summer moon
glowing silent over a manicured lawn
with the hard pricks brough low.
Smells go brighter still slowly
to the steady movements of swings
twinned in their syncopated moans
and high-pitched retreats.
The gardenias and singing sounds
make islands in the dark
of a long, lonely porch,
while two invisible people speak with one another,
the gardenias and the moon.
     "What about when the hungry winter comes
     With all of your pungent desire" sounded,
     the higher of the two.
     "I'll just lie to you to keep it secret.
     Those secrets, they will keep you," moaned.
That summer moon kept glowing
till autumn made it bright
and gardenia blossoms waned quieter
in its harsh, October glare.

Sickly-swee smells must go with the cold
along with the sounds of swinging.
That porch is not deserted, though now it is the foreign orchids
that bloom there instead.

Where's Newton?

A moment ago I wrote a poem
About itself
It was brilliantly connected,
Theme to metaphor, form to function.
Loke Newton's nail-less bridge.
It hung suspended by its own 
Gravity.

A moment ago I wrote a poem
That fell apart,
Partly because I've never seen a moment
.  Partly because I've never seen a moment
.  But, though I know I remember,
Word for word recall the lines
That stuck together like calculus,

I can't be the same person.

A moment ago he wrote a poem,
A poem that I can never know.
I only know it like a freezer,
Rigid and cold.
Soemtimes that other person gets out
Stumbling like and ice man thawed,
He has my face, but is really out of place,

A relic poem writer. But where then
Is the poet? Or rather, when?

A man named Newton made a magic bridge
Where wood's weight pushed up wood
So no nail need scar it. But,
Not to be outdone, Nature worked away
Till the wood rotted away,
And all Newton's students
Couldn't put it back together again

Without nails.

Breaking the Leash Laws

Let loose the dogs of war
for Death is coming over
and she loves to nag about
going to the Jones'es
instead of visiting quietly
with the TV.

Let loose the dogs of war
for she loves dogs a lot
and will want go out and find them
and maybe even walk them about
for a visit to the Jones'es.

And when you let loose of the dogs
put on a dark suit or serious
dress if you're a woman as though
going to a funeral. Funerals
are boring enough to keep her away
and they keep the time occupied with dressing.

Let loose our dogs of war
because they are restless and too big
to stay couped up in the yard
and too annoying to be let in the house.
And also, wear cherry red ties

for after you let loose the dogs of war
you'll want an excuse to get Death
when she brings back the stray pets.
Like the Jews and the door thing (only less messy)
you might make her thing she's been there already.

For she's bad about spilling cherry Kool-Aid
and prone to forgetfulness.

Fighting Flowers

     You couldn't kill that old honeysuckle
That crawled over and crushed the neighbors fence,
Those sweet white and yellow flowers curling under
The metal mes. It was like those lazy dogs
That lay under your feet for years.
They just get fatter and more fragrant.
The time came when we had to cut it back.
Thin green vines had ripened until they became
Thick woody branches, full of water, so heavy
That it all slumped dangerously into our yard,
Threatening to lay waste to the boundaries
That make living life in suburbia better
Than whatever it was people did in the cities.

Though we fought the sugary intruder with courage
There was no stopping its whirling, crazy courage
There was no stopping its whirling, crazy assault.
The flower power was killer. We wanted to get the roots,
Throw a shovel at it till it cried mercy, but
They were over the line, Wat do you do to a plant
That refuses to stay where it's planted,
That refuses to play nice with the fence?
There ought to be laws against nature,
Thistles and all, from making itself such a nuisance.
Then again, I guess we did go a bit far. Perhaps,
Thoroughly too far with the poison idea.
That was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

The notion was to spray the damn weed and kill it
Then and there. Herbicide. It rings like homicide only
There's no guilt attached. So we took the stuff,
The herbicide, and sprayed it liberally onto our enemy.
There was no reprieve! No noticeable death except
The young trees in the front yard, the saplings,
That did it for us mostly. After that, only token fights
Then and again were wage. It had won and now even
The consolation of its nectar was denied to us, since
The residual toxins might do us more damage
Than it ever did to the flowers. It's sad we fought them so.
They didn't turn ugly like most vines I know.

Resolution of the Identity of Crisis of Tweezers

The tweezers are joined
Two opposites together
To a single purpose

I take them together
Pressed tight 'tween finger and thumb
Read to grip. It is the mouth of a corocodile
Swimming smoothly forward with firm intentions
On a hold. Snap!
It is the click of shining enamel.
His smell is hidden as an animal underwater.

I turn the tool delicately
So the pinch is up and release
Its tension. Points swerve upwards
Into antlers of a gazelle
Picking the end with with a nail
Makes a clack.
It is the impact of fighting horns.
His taste is what he's been eating, as with all animals.

I twist the two together
where they seem to become one
in an instant. It has killed the others
at once with a spear
As if striking its target with
Deadly force, it tongs
The reverberation of a long-shafted weapon.
Its heft is easy like all good tools.

The name of the tweezers is real
Because they do what was intended
And I recognize the features.